The Asiatic Society 
of Japan

Dr. Yuichiro Anzai, Executive Academic Advisor and Professor Emeritus, Keio University, and Senior Advisor, the Japan Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS)

The ongoing progress of AI technology is having a tremendous impact on our contemporary society. AI is changing virtually everything in the world: from politics and national security to the economy and finance, to employment and legal systems, to educational methodologies, to ways of doing science, technology and healthcare, and to how we deal with ethical, moral and other philosophical issues. The impact of AI, with the worldwide spread of the Internet and other digital technologies, is comparable to the Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that changed the whole world at the time. Dr. Anzai’s lecture will focus on this topic; considering what it means for us to live in this remarkable era of AI. The talk is entirely for people who have little or no knowledge of AI, hence there will be a brief introduction of what AI is. On the other hand, the lecture will refer to diverse topics, each inevitably brief, in such areas being affected by AI as politics, the economy, social life, education, technology and philosophy. Dr. Anzai hopes that his presentation will convey some ideas on how we can or should live in a world that is now drastically changing with the advancement of AI technology.  

Dr. Yuichiro Anzai is Executive Academic Advisor and Professor Emeritus, Keio University, and Senior Advisor, the Japan Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS). He received Ph.D. in engineering in 1974, and further received a Ph.D. in philosophy in 2018, both from Keio University. Dr. Anzai has devoted his academic career to cognitive science and AI since the mid-1970’s: he is particularly known for his work on learning by doing and human interaction with robots. He had academic positions at Carnegie Mellon, Hokkaido, and Keio University, as well as visiting positions at the University of Edinburgh and McGill University. He also worked as the Dean of the School of Science and Technology (1993-2001), then as the President (2001-09), of Keio University: Japan’s oldest modern institution for higher learning, and as President (2011-18) of the JSPS: the representative research-funding agency of the Japanese government. Dr. Anzai has chaired a number of governmental organizations, including the Central Council for Education, the National Commission for UNESCO, and the Strategic Council for AI Technology under the Cabinet office, and he has also served for international organizations such as being the President of the Association of Pacific-Rim Universities, the Chair of the Global Research Council, and others. Dr. Anzai has published nearly four hundred single- and co-authored reviewed academic articles and books, including books in English such as: “Learning and Interaction: From Cognitive Theories to Epistemology” (2021, Keio University Press) and “Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning” (1992, Academic Press, English translation of the author’s Japanese book published in 1989). In addition, Dr. Anzai has received many awards, including being designated as a Person of Cultural Merit and the Medal of Purple Ribbon from the Japanese government, and receiving the Commandeur de l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques and Chevalier de l’Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur from the French government.  

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